old gentleman named Quixada, who owned a house and a small property
near a village in La Mancha.

With him lived his niece, a housekeeper, and a man who looked after
Quixada's farm and his one old white horse, which, though its master
imagined it to be an animal of great strength and beauty, was really
as lean as Quixada himself and as broken down as any old cab horse.

Quixada had nothing in the world to do in the shape of work, and so,
his whole time was taken up in reading old books about knights and
giants, and ladies shut up in enchanted castles by wicked ogres. In
time, so fond did he become of such tales that he passed his days, and
even the best part of his nights, in reading them. His mind was so
wholly taken up in this way that at last he came to believe that he
himself lived in a land of giants and of ogres, and that it was his
duty to ride forth on his noble steed, to the rescue of unhappy
Princesses.

In the lumber-room of Quixada's house there had lain, ever since he
was born, a rusty old suit of armor, which had belonged to his
great-grandfather. This was now got out, and Quixada spent many days
in polishing and putting it in order.

Unfortunately, there was no more than half of the helmet to be found,
and a knight cannot ride forth without a helmet.

So Quixada made the other half of strong pasteboard; and to prove that
it was strong enough, when finished, he drew his sword and gave the
helmet a great slash. Alas! a whole week's work was ruined by that one
stroke; the pasteboard flew into pieces. This troubled Quixada sadly,
but he set to work at once and made another helmet of pasteboard,
lining it with thin sheets of iron, and it looked so well that, this
time, he put it to no test with his sword.

Now that his armor was complete, it occurred to him that he must give
his horse a name--every knight's horse should have a good name--and
after four days thought he decided that "Rozinante" would best suit
the animal.

Then, for himself, after eight days of puzzling, he resolved that he
should be called Don Quixote de la Mancha.

There was but one thing more. Every knight of olden time had a lady,
whom he called the Mistress of his Heart, whose glove he wore in his
helmet; and if anybody dared to deny that this lady was the most
beautiful woman in the whole world, then the knight made him prove his
words by fighting.

So it was necessary that Don Quixote should select some lady as the
Mistress of